Curiosity over the man calling himself a messiah makes Waco the center of a media circus. FBI negotiation and rescue teams clash over the use of force. The negotiating team established contact with Koresh inside the compound. Communication over the next 51 days included telephone exchanges with various FBI negotiators. Koresh himself had been seriously injured by a gunshot. As the standoff continued, he and his closest male associates negotiated delays, so that he could possibly write religious documents, which he said he needed to complete before his surrender. Koresh's conversations with the negotiators were dense and they also included biblical imagery. The FBI negotiators treated the situation as a hostage crisis.
Did China hide crucial information about Covid-19 from the world? What began with a handful of mystery pneumonia cases in Wuhan late last year has now left more than half a million dead worldwide. Beijing says it has been open and transparent throughout, but former BBC China Editor Carrie Gracie investigates how it delayed reporting the initial outbreak and evidence that Covid-19 could be spread by people. It also silenced doctors who tried to speak out. The film also hears from one high-level insider who believes the animal market at the centre of the Wuhan outbreak should have been treated as a 'crime scene' and from experts who warn that this crisis may be a 'dress rehearsal' for an even more deadly pandemic in the future.
America says eight out of ten industrial espionage cases now involve China. Governments around the world are uncovering secret operations to expand China's influence - the work of a little-known branch of the Chinese Communist Party called the United Front Work Department. President Xi has called it his 'magic weapon'. Jane Corbin investigates this powerful but shadowy organisation. Has influence become interference as China bids to become the most powerful nation on earth?
Salvador Dali's strange crucifixion is often called the greatest religious painting of the 20th century. Yet its artist was a notorious blasphemer some of whose work had outraged the Catholic Church. The Christ of St John of the Cross by Salvador Dali is the first of two extraordinary crucifixions painted by Dali in the early 1950s. The painting is based on a 'cosmic dream' Dali is said to have had, in which the nucleus of the atom was a figure of Christ himself. The painting offers a surrealist view of the crucifixion of Christ, and is based on a drawing by the 16th century Spanish friar Saint John of the Cross. But Dali's vision was somewhat unique, using an unusual artistic perspective in which Christ is seen from above. His Christ of St. John of The Cross was inspired by a weird mix of Spanish mysticism and nuclear physics, with his Christ being modelled by a Hollywood stuntman. It's also a masterpiece of painting technique.
This is the story of three maps, three 'visions' of London over three centuries. The Morgan Map of 1682 was the first to show the whole of the City of London after the Great Fire of London. In 1746 John Rocque produced at the time the most detailed map ever made of London. Like Morgan's, Rocque's map is all neo-Classical beauty and clinical precision, but the London it represented had become the opposite. In engravings of the time, such as Night, the artist William Hogarth shows a city boiling with vice and corruption. Stephen Walter's contemporary image, The Island, plays with notions of cartographic order and respectability. His extraordinary London map looks at first glance to be just as precise and ordered as his hero Rocque's but, looking closer, it includes 21st century markings such as 'favourite kebab vans' and sites of 'personal heartbreak'.
Another year in the life of Diddly Squat Farm, run by Jeremy Clarkson, Britain's best-known but least-qualified amateur farmer. Season 2 of Clarkson’s Farm promises to be even better than the first as Clarkson and his rag tag group combat the public, the council, and the government. In the first episode, Clarkson attempts to diversify his farm's revenue sources (having made only £144 in the previous year) in an effort to increase his profits. He decides that his primary way of doing this will be a new herd of cows and promptly purchases several of the animals. However, the timing of when they will bring in money and the necessity of building an enclosure for them causes problems for Jeremy and Charlie. Meanwhile, inspired by the success of the farm shop, Clarkson has the idea to open a restaurant in the abandoned lambing barn to sell his beef and lamb, but he must deal with the cost of converting the barn and getting approval from the local council.
Communication over the next 51 days included telephone exchanges with various FBI negotiators. Koresh himself had been seriously injured by a gunshot. As the standoff continued, he and his closest male associates negotiated delays, so that he could possibly write religious documents, which he said he needed to complete before his surrender. Koresh's conversations with the negotiators were dense and they also included biblical imagery. The FBI negotiators treated the situation as a hostage crisis.